For Geelong, The Future is Here with Lachie Henderson #AFLTrades

Verdict – Fair trade (Carlton gains 100 points of pick and player value, or 1.085 points back for every point given up).

So this is what happens when Geelong doesn’t make the finals. With only three confirmed trades completed over the Trade Period so far, Geelong has been involved in two of them, receiving players in both. If you lump in Free Agency, Geelong has been involved in a total of four player movements (pending Dawson Simpson’s move), and we’re only at day 3.

Lachie Henderson is probably a little undervalued by our system – he was held out of the last three games of the season by Carlton after he announced his attention to leave. If you add those games in, Henderson’s value rises to 1231 points, a marginal improvement in his value. Henderson has shown that he can competently play at both ends of the ground as a key position player, but with the likely move of Josh Walker his main role is likely to be up forward, depending on the use of Mitch Clark and Rhys Stanley. At times last year Geelong used funky ruck/forward combinations using Clark, Stanley and Blicavs, which worked primarily due to the athleticism of the latter two. With another tall body in the forward line, it might be hard to make this type of set up work.

Also of note is the recent success of former Carlton forwards at their new clubs, notably Jarrad Waite, Eddie Betts and Jeff Garlett. Upon shifting clubs, all three increased their goal outputs on the previous season. Waite had a career high for goals last season, coming at the age of 32 which is extremely rare for a tall forward. Betts set career highs for goals in the each of the last two seasons for Adelaide, and received more Brownlow votes than in his entire Carlton career combined. For Melbourne, Jeff Garlett looked like a rejuvenated player, increasing his goals per game output from 1.33 per game in 2014 to 1.82 in 2015. If Henderson can improve his output in line with these three, Geelong will have done well coming out of the back of this trade.

This also marks the first trade for a future draft pick in the AFL’s history, with Carlton receiving Geelong’s 2016 first round pick. At HPN, we are taking the preliminary position of valuing future picks at their current value, i.e. we are expecting Geelong to roughly finish in the same ladder position as they did this year. As per a suggestion by Ryan Buckland on one of our previous posts, we have also looked at tying the pick to an inverse of the betting markets for the 2016 premiership, which would put the Geelong pick at number 12 (7th favourite for the flag). This would further improve the value proposition for the Cats, but is far from certain from actually happening.

At the present time, it looks like both sides have done relatively well out of the deal – Carlton getting another much needed draft pick, and Geelong getting a ready to go key position player to slot into their best 22.